Without asking permission first – Four words adice for CBC executives

A needed discussion was started by the blog entry “CBC proposes approving employees’ personal blogs“. Here is an excerpt (emphasis mine),

Any CBC employee who wants to start a personal blog which “clearly associates them with CBC/Radio-Canada” now requires their supervisor’s permission, according to a new “guideline document.”

I think CBC is making a big mistake so I took some time to send my feedback. Here is an excerpt from my comment (with emphasis and link),

My quick personal impression is that CBC is implicitly assuming it is acceptable to use the old world heavy-handed legal languages in the new world of blogging. Sure, it may be the perfectly safe (some cynics may say cover-your-ass) guideline to have. But is this the right attitude to have in the new age of more open and free communications?

The new world of open source and crowd-sourcing is that the “crowd” and the “regular people” may sometimes be smarter than the “experts” or the mangers/supervisors. If blogger needs to get his/her “supervisor’s permission” first, then where it negates the many potential benefits from employees blogging. [K: see Open Source, Crowdsourcing] I have repeatedly linked to Sun Microsystem’s blogging policy [K: For the record, I have never worked for Sun Microsystems.] here but unfortunately CBC senior executives who wrote the guideline didn’t notice them. So for the record, I am copying the whole thing here for CBC senior executives to think about and may be even learn from.

For the senior CBC executives that don’t have time to read, here is a four word executive summary of Sun’s blogging plicy, “without asking permission first“.

As an aside, if this “guideline” is made official, it may be wise for the CBC union to challenge the “guideline” under the Charter of rights and freedom and possibly using section 2 (in particular freedom of expression and freedom of the press). And I think it may be even quite reasonable to include the associated legal expenses for the court challenge (likely going all the way to the supreme Court of Canada) to be deducted from the budget of the genius CBC executives that created this “guideline”. Lets hope the CBC executives will realize their mistakes and change the “guideline” to a more sensible one as soon as possible.

I write my critique of the CBC blogging “guideline” because I think it simply sets the wrong tone for CBC employees and because I love CBC.

P.S.  I am not a lawyer so my comments are not legal advices. For the lawyers at CBC, may I recommend reading my blog friend Mike Dillion’s (Sun’s General Consul) legal blog to consider writing a blog of your own? It is a good exercise of open communications and also to get a sense of what bloggers have to face.